Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ireland signed up to unattainable goals. We are praising ourselves this evening because emissions dropped between 2007 and 2012. They did so because we exported 245,000 youngsters from our country in one of the worst recessions we have seen. Thank God the economy is picking up. There are 2.1 million people working now for the first time ever. When people do not have public transport they drive to work and then there will be more emissions.

I travelled to Banbridge in County Down to see anaerobic digesters for making biogas. Not one person from any Department bothered to look at them. They are not in the plan. Farmers could produce grass to make gas. Slurry could be used in an anaerobic digester. It could be pelleted and we could make use of it for water quality and for the environment. These are things that we talk about but we are not going to do them. Ireland cannot stop progress in agriculture so let us do it more efficiently. This year, we will reach only 60% of our target number of trees planted. The trees all seem to be coming to the west of Ireland. We deserve to make a living there as well and do not want to see trees around every house. The whole country should share the brunt of this. Government should make sure that is done. Nobody has a problem with taking their fair share. When a farmer plants trees, the Government takes the carbon credit relating to those trees. It is not left to the owner of the private property.

I believe in transport.

For transport, electric cars can be used in cities if one is accruing a small mileage but we must remember the road we have travelled before this. From 2007 to 2009, we were told to buy diesel cars. The tax on diesel cars came down to €180 or €190 if one had a car from 2009 onwards because such a car was more efficient. They may have been more efficient but Volkswagen and other companies fooled everyone with regard to emissions and now those people who have just about finished paying for those cars are being told to scrap them and to go electric. Money does not circulate if one is living in a rural part of the country where one gets €12,000 to €18,000 per year. One cannot just ditch a car, throw it on the side of the road and decide to buy something new. It needs to be incentivised by Government. We are talking about it and the Minister, Deputy Ross, is involved. I spoke to Barry Kenny of Irish Rail, to Bus Éireann and to Dublin Bus. We can use gas buses but at the end of the day, in the last budget, we did not even have €1 billion because Europe has us tied in fiscal rules. If we are to change Dublin Bus, which would help the environment, from diesel to gas, it will cost a lot of money. Let us be honest and not live in fantasy. If we are to change the way our trains work, it will cost €2 billion to €3 billion over the next ten years. Do we have that money? Let us not live in a world of talking about something if we do not have the money to do it.

There was an announcement yesterday that Bord na Móna is going to America to deal with Donald Trump. He is clapping his hands. His own guys are going to be working out there. They will be cutting timber, hauling it to a factory that Irish taxpayers will subsidise, a lorryman will pick it up with a 40 ft wagon, haul it to a port and it will go on a ship, then land in Ireland, where it will burn at 40% efficiency. At the same time we are doing that, we will tell Bord na Móna workers that they are sound lads and not to worry, since peat production at Bord na Móna will be phased out by 2030. What jobs will they get? Be honest with people that if that biomass is coming to a port whether in Foynes, Drogheda or Dublin, there will not be a Bord na Móna worker picking it up because it put the hackers that it had and its own drivers out onto the bog. It let go of the part-time workers. It hired in subbies to haul its stuff. The 1,600 workers deserve an answer. Where will they be in this plan?

I have heard people around the country talk about willow. We tried miscanthus and they went bust with it. Today, I spoke with a contractor who said he can produce willow for the price Bord na Móna is getting today. Contrary to what I have heard all evening, willow only grows on good land to the tonnage one needs, not marginal land and certainly not mountain land. In this country, we have designated mountains where one cannot sow a tree but it may be helpful to do so. The trees may not be as good. They may be twisted a bit but they may reduce some carbon. We need to wake up from the dream of where we are and the myth that we are going wrong with them.

After we bring in all this stuff from America and are burning palm kernels from South Africa, I heard a Minister come out discussing agri-land or such today to say we are going to get rid of Johnny down the country who, 100 yards from his land, is cutting the five or ten hoppers of turf for his fireplace. We should learn from history about trying to take on the ordinary domestic turf cutter, not a commercial one but someone who does it for his or her own fire. I look at what we will do in America which with a big ship we will bring to Ireland, while we are going to tell people in the country who are living on €12,000 to €15,000 in income that they cannot cut turf, including many pensioners. We tell them we will give them a grant. I rang the Department of Rural and Community Development this evening to see what this grant was and if we had the details. The person in charge of it in the Department had been moved and there were no details about it. We are making announcements when there is no substance behind it. The Government should get one thing clear in its head that the 60 or 70 year old in the country or the person in socio-economically deprived areas will not listen to the codswallop coming out. We live in reality, not in fantasy. There might have been a battle over the last few years but with some of the stuff that has come out today, those people have bigger battles coming.

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